[C19fan]

There is vermin and there is Australian vermin.

[Hang'emAll]

Kill or be killed.

Sort of like ISIS.

[chris37]

I’m not sure that horrifying is the word I would use.

Nature is brutal and utterly without compassion.

[Gman]

Election Night Replay...

[Samogon]

“The spider wasp is not aggressive, but is capable of inflicting a very painful sting if provoked.” - I hope to have the same reputation.

[T-Bird45]

There is vermin and there is Australian vermin.

The Brits had it right in the beginning to make it a penal colony.

[Guenevere]

Go wasp!

[LoneStarGI]

Reminds me of the Cicada-Killer wasps we have down here in Texas. They look like huge yellow-jackets and can be almost 2 inches in length. But they don’t hurt humans.

[Grimmy]

There is vermin and there is Australian vermin.

---

They do overdo it a bit, don’t they?

[RegulatorCountry]

What is it about Australia, that it got such quantity and variety of strange, nasty beasties? Those funnel web spiders alone give me the willies.

[Moonman62]

[Axenolith]

The “horrifying” part isn’t that it kills the spider, it DOESN’T! It paralyzes it and lays the egg with the larvae being able to feed on living, unspoiling, flesh!

[MrEdd]

The saddest thing about spiders is that they don’t have little faces so you can see the look of shock and outrage as they are sucked up into the vacuum cleaner.

[MarMema]

An incredible book related to the subject is "This is your brain on parasites"

Because these wasps do neurosurgery on other insects. And they say it is incredibly advanced neurosurgery.

[crusty old prospector]

Why is it horrifying?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***It kills them and uses them as a giant meal for its larvae***

Strange. I was taught the wasp paralyzes the spider so the larvae can have a live meal over time.

[MarMema]

The wasp's stinger is so well tuned to its victim that it can sense where it is inside the cockroach's dome to inject venom directly into subsections of its brain. The stinger is capable of feeling around in the roach's head, relying on mechanical and chemical cues to find its way past the ganglionic sheath (the insect's version of a blood-brain barrier) and inject venom exactly where it needs to go. The two areas of the roach brain that she targets are very important to her; scientists have artificially clipped them from cockroaches to see how the wasp reacts, and when they are removed, the wasp tries to find them, taking a long time with her stinger embedded in search of the missing brain regions.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Isn't that one of those Asian Giant hornets that eat Honey bees for snacks?

[tumblindice]

"Insect politics ain't pretty." Brundle Fly

[editor-surveyor]

.
We have wasps similar to that one in the SF Bay Area, and the San Joaquin valley. They’re big, but not at all aggressive.
.

[Uncle Sam 911]

Having them in your house seems horrifying to me.